It’s all about that rain…

As I mentioned last week we’ve been busy getting plants transplanted in the field or seeding in the field, but for the past week it has been hard to work around the rain. I keep looking for windows when the soil isn’t too wet to put things in the ground. I also don’t want to do any direct seeding right before we get any hard rains because I fear the seeds would get washed out. So it has been a little tricky lately.

We were able to get plantings of broccoli, chinese cabbage, lettuce, bok choy, cabbage, cauliflower, and a couple others transplanted last week Wednesday I believe. I was also able to squeeze in some seeding on Friday, the soil seemed just right to do some tilling and put down some seeds before we got the rain over the weekend. I put in the arugula, radishes, mix greens for the first CSA week so I am hoping we had enough gentle rain to settle the soil before anything got washed out by the heavier rains we got later.

This week, after what I think was over two inches of rain we got over the weekend, it will be a little harder to get in the field. Tuesday has been a bit windy, which is drying things out a little, but it is still quite wet.I hope it dries out enough to be able to get out in to the field on Wednesday and Thursday. My goal for this week is to transplant all our celery, celeriac, another round of lettuce and bok choy, mini cabbage, and a couple other random things for harvest in June. If we can get everything in it looks like it will rain again on Friday so that will be great for the transplants to have some nice rain after they get in.

I always am grateful for the rain because the soil on the Blandford farm drains fairly quickly so while we benefit from rarely being too wet, we do hurt a little more when it is dry. I’d love to have an average of an inch or an inch and a half of rain each week on the farm, which rarely ever happens just right, but most of the time things work out fairly well. However, what often happens is similar to what we’ve had this spring where were dry for a week or two then we go from dry to too much rain.

One nice thing about these rainy days is that it has allowed us to get caught up with the greenhouse work again. We were a week behind, but as of this morning we are set for this week’s planting schedule. So there is a positive side to too much rain, which is true about most things in life.